After thinking about it, this has really started to bug me. Lets assume that TF eye's work as a lens, like ours, that process the light that passes into them into images. That means light has to pass into them rather than be output by them. If their eyes glow, they shouldn't be able to see.

Looking back, glowing eyes weren't used on TFs at all really. The only time their eyes would glow is when they'd surge briefly in the G1 cartoon, such as when prime died.

Recent comics have really taken this over the top though where their eyes are like frikkin bulbs lighting up their heads.

So how do people feel about this. Glowing eyes just have stopped making sense to me now, and I'd rather see them used sparingly from now on.

The eyes of a TF are like what an on button is to the human race. We equate "on" with some sort of glowing light, thus psychologically we know they're alive, versus a pair of blank, dead, black eyes usually means death or some kind of an offline status (think Prime's death in the movie; not only did his body turn ashen gray, but his eyes dimmed and eventually went out, which did more to signify his death than almost anything else). I think the glow is more for the readers/watchers to easily distinguish their status. I like it, and I'm used to it. How the eyes actually work should be left a mystery; when we try to deconstruct alien technology, it doesn't seem so alien anymore.

Maybe their eyes work like a laser? They emit light, and through that light, they scan the objects and picture them in their mind? Kind of like a light-sonar.

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A cool idea, but light reflective imaging would be far less efficient and useful than sound-based sonar due to light's wave-particle duality as well as its tendency for transmission, refraction, and absorption in many surfaces, where imaging would only truly be possible on highly reflective surfaces, unless a separate (and gigantic) set of arrays were used to "catch" the light emitted by the "eye". In a best case scenario, it would work like having a camera with a flashlight attached on the end.

We've seen the eyes do other things besides see in various series, like project holograms, offensive weaponry, display diagnostic data, and interface with computer systems. Maybe the "glow" is more related to these systems than optics.

A cool idea, but light reflective imaging would be far less efficient and useful than sound-based sonar due to light's wave-particle duality as well as its tendency for transmission, refraction, and absorption in many surfaces, where imaging would only truly be possible on highly reflective surfaces, unless a separate (and gigantic) set of arrays were used to "catch" the light emitted by the "eye". In a best case scenario, it would work like having a camera with a flashlight attached on the end.

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I see.
On the other hand, we could "explain" those problems with the old "It's Super-Advanced Alien Technology, we don't have to explain it" argument.

If that doesn't work either, we could say Transformers are like Daradevil in the comic books [at least as far as I remember]: All of his sensorial systems were multiplied tenfold, so they work together to allow greater perception.

In other words, Transformers would use the "light-sonar", the sound-sonar and various other types of technology all together to perceive their surroundings.